No limits to the debacle

I’ve been writing about NASCAR for 20 years. I’ve been watching it for almost my entire life. I’ve written about sports for publication since high school. What have I seen that compared with Sunday’s Advocare 500 at Phoenix International Raceway?

AVONDALE, Ariz. – I’ve been writing about NASCAR for 20 years. I’ve been watching it for almost my entire life. I’ve written about sports for publication since high school.

What have I seen that compared with Sunday’s Advocare 500 at Phoenix International Raceway?

Hmm. Let’s see. A donkey softball game comes to mind. That’s when a player hits the ball, jumps on a donkey and runs the bases, usually with the donkey bucking up a storm. Those in the field are similarly limited by the necessity of playing ball while riding donkeys.

My father used to fashion an old car hood into a sled and pull us around town behind a tractor in the snow. Sometimes my old man slung us into ditches. That reminded me a little of the final lap.

I once had the honor of writing about an American Legion baseball game in which the visiting team scored 15 runs in the top of the first inning … and subsequently lost. The park had more stray cats than fans at the end of that one.

I’ve seen the Clown Prince of Baseball when it was Max Patkin, and the Clown Prince of NASCAR when it was Jabe Thomas. On Sunday, I couldn’t single out just one.

Something about the final few laps at Phoenix made race-car drivers, very few of which ever considered the clergy anyway, into lunatics even more raving than they all are anyway.

Once upon a time, stock car racers hauled moonshine during the week, but they never behaved quite so badly at Columbia on a Thursday night, even after a swig of corn liquor just to knock the chill off.

Michael Waltrip, who’s seen a few knock-down drag-outs before, said he’d never seen anything like it. He called Jeff Gordon’s shenanigans – has Gordon ever been accused of “shenanigans” in his life? – “cowardly” and “chicken.”